Friday, November 06, 2009

How business stories are made - the inside scoop

Dan Lyons, writing as his alter ego "fake steve jobs", tells us how big glossy business magazine stories are made. It's a story everyone should know. (The "filthy hack" is Dan Lyons of course, and he's getting some revenge served cold ...)

...One of the filthiest hacks on the beat has been trying to curry favor with Katie, and she's playing along, pretending to be his friend, hoping we can maybe use him for something at some point. Katie calls this her "back pocket strategy," meaning it's always good to keep a few of these frigtards in your back pocket in case you need them someday....

...If you want to see the full version of the pitch letter you can find it here. I didn't want to fill up this post with the whole thing because it's pretty long. But it's also pretty hilarious reading, especially if you've ever wondered how those big features on giant companies end up in your magazine.

Little hint: The companies think them up themselves, and put together a complete package, with charts and statistics, phone numbers for analysts and "independent observers" (all of them fully prepped and totally on message) -- and then, when they've got the whole thing wrapped up with ribbons and bows, they go looking for a hack to write it up for them.

What makes this case especially ridiculous is that the hack who passed us this pitch has had a somewhat rocky relationship with the Original Borg. In fact, this hack was once on an O.B. blacklist...

Another time the two top flacks at IBM actually met with the top two editors at this hack's publication and demanded that the editors remove this hack from the IBM beat. Another times, an O.B. exec and his minions orchestrated letter-writing campaigns against this hack, bombarding the hack's publications with letters denouncing him. The O.B. exec wrote his own letters to the publication, too, and in his he demanded that the hack should be terminated...

Now they want a favor. Funny how that shit comes around, isn't it?

IBM won't be trying pitches to Lyons for a while. Must have been someone who didn't know the back story.

I gave up on business magazines decades ago. I haven't noticed their absence. Incidentally, Microsoft's effective ownership of the 1980s and 90s industry trade magazines was much more important than is remembered now.